Diary of a Beta Tester, Day 3

You might be wondering why Day 3 and not Day 1. We’ll get there. First, let’s answer another question – Beta Tester for what? Well, a game that I have been looking forward to for some time, not necessarily for a reason. The game at hand is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.





I haven’t played World of Warcraft on Day 1 so I don’t know how it went, but people say there were some major problems back then. I’ve played Age of Conan from Day one, and it was a bit annoying, as they started the servers some hours later than initially announced. But, other than that, and ignoring major gameplay bugs, everything went pretty smooth. And, if you come to think about it, some years have passed since WoW was released, and there were other MMORPGs thrown in there, and all had launch problems. You might think people learn from this shit – they don’t…
WAR entered Open Beta this week and, since I preordered the Collector’s Edition, I had a key for this. Basically, Open Beta is there to see if the game servers can hold the tide of players eager to try the new prodigy from Mythic/EA. From the beginning it smelled to me that shit will go bad – the European version was handled by some fuckers called GOA. Never heard of them, and when I say fuckers I’m using a kind word – a better one would be uber idiots… or something like that.





To shorten the story – the fuckers have a site that you can use to create accounts and register and manage your shit. It’s made in flash, so it moves slowly and you can’t understand anything from it. The Beta was supposed to start on Sunday, and the idiots though they could handle shit, so people could register their key on Sunday morning and start playing in the afternoon. That’s some fine thinking – if you have 50-100 players, but not when we’re talking thousands. Needless to say, on Sunday you couldn’t do anything on their site – you couldn’t create accounts, if you managed to create one there was no chance you would get a confirmation and, if by some unknown twist of luck you got the confirmation, there was no chance in hell you could register you key.





So, basically, instead of testing the game servers, they where beta testing the account managing mechanism. The site flooded with apologies – but shit still didn’t work. They also had the nerve to say that “Yeah, we have a problem with the accounts, but the game servers work fine” Dude! Did the thought that only 2-3 players managed to log in so fat?? Funny how the next day, when more players managed to register their keys and enter the game, the game servers crashed. I had nothing against this, as this w3as expected, and this was the purpose of beta… if you can get there.

Well, finally, today I managed to get my account working. And the game seems pretty cool, although still shadowed by WoW. I’ll come back tomorrow with some more interesting shit on this.

-MasterX
I summon the Dogs of War.

WAR is coming!

snowflake

Hi guys, ladies,

I`m proud to announce that as of today I`m father of an 280 grams child called PSP Ceramic White :)
As its name states, it`s white, well shaped, lots of buttons and a crystal clear lcd screen.
I already gave it a spin with a game named "Apes Academy" -- a card based game (like magic the gathering, warcraft card game or, for all the children out there, yu-gi-oh).
What can I say? Game is very childish but the interaction and the game play are great. I could never imagine myself playing such a game, but still, here I am, buttoning left and right, pressing squares and circles, as if my life depends on it :)


If you ever cried for a GameBoy when you were little, you should definetly spend 800 Ryials on this ubercool PSP (btw, 800 ryials = 480 RON = 130 Euro // approx).

MasterX, maybe we can rendez-vous on TNB sometime soon and do a battle royale :) at a couple of beers of course, at stake :P

Until next time,
Game on!

Portables

This vacation I’ve rediscovered my portable console. I’ve bought them this spring, played on them like crazy and then forgot them in my backpack. But every time I rediscover them, I remember how cool shit can be.

There’s not much to say about the PSP – it’s like a Playstation, and you can carry it around. Has great graphics, but its major problem is that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Of course, it has uber cool games like God of War and Final Fantasy VII (or Metal Gear, but I haven’t played this so much so I’m not sure how good it is), but I’ve seen these games somewhere before. Then again – can you ever have enough of Kratos? Don’t think so… And FFVII is such a tease – makes you pray they remake the original game to today’s graphics. And did I mention I almost cried at the end of the game?

The Nintendo DS is a totally different piece of technology, but you have to have a little bit a gamer in you to really appreciate it. I think sharp will love its shit, as it really takes you back to the old days. From hardware standards, the DS suck – sure it has two screen (one of them being a touch screen), two processors, but comparing it to the PSP is like comparing the Voodoo 3 to a GTX280. But I always had this philosophy about games – if you limit the hardware, you let loose the imagination. So, as a developer for the DS, you don’t have to worry your head about squizing polygons on screen – you cand have 2D graphics try to make cool gameplay, so the player doesn’t notice it’s not the best looking thing in the world.

And if you get a DS, you have to play Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It’s the coolest game I’ve played, and you really can’t put it down until you encounter a puzzle that makes you smash your head against the wall. And that is cool. Also, I’m kind of ashamed by this, but I played a Pokemon game (Pokemon Diamond) and I really enjoyed it. Like really enjoyed it.

-MasterX
The God of something.

Nintendo DS Development

I've rediscovered my portable consoles on my vacation. This will be covered in tomorrow's blog, but I just wanted to ask this:

Any 2D graphic artist out there that might be interested in trying to make some game resources?

I'm thinking about doing some DS development tutorials, and I know some programmers, but no artist. So, if you want to give it a try, don't hesitate to contact me.

-MasterX

No games, just a funny video :)

Heya, nothing about games today, just a freaking funny video :) A must-see ;) n`joy!

Wow! Warcraft 3

Heya,

Long time, no wrote ... (not sure English grammar works that way but you`ll get it someday :P)
Well, what have I been up to? I enjoyed a couple of weekends at the sea-side, where I got my skin tanned, except for my yo-yo area :P

Aaaanyway, to get right to business, I was so booooored today that I had to go outside and buy a game, something, anything ... :) and I stumbled upon the infamous World of Warcraft at the games rack. I already had the first edition of WoW, so I was intrigued if I should buy the second edition, called The burning crusade. After a short inspection I noticed it costs around 20~25Euros, it had no pre-paid period (so I have to pay again on internet with my credit card or to buy a pre-paid card). Since last time I played WoW, my account was payed by spitfir3 (another friend of mine, which btw should be entitled to speak about games and not me, since he`s a level designer :P) I took the time to look around for ANY OTHER games ...

I saw there are quite a few MMOG`s nowadays but I also saw Warcraft 3 packs (Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne). Both games are around 10Euros, so that`s a total of 20Euros if you buy both and guess what, it`s free to download DOTA (a cool multiplayer map) and have the best time ever ... so as I`m writting this I`m also installing Warcraft 3 :P

Should I still mention that OLD GAMES rule? I guess you already understood this by now ;)

Until next time, game on!

When Devils Cry

Konami’s Devil May Cry has been around for some time and, as weird as it sounds, it hasn’t changed that much. If you look at the world around, you will see that most of the franchises that have reached their 4th or 5th iteration have changed something – and some changes were good (Resident Evil 4 comes to mind here, or Final Fantasy XII, two games in which everything was redesigned to make them ultimately cool) while others sucked ass real bad (take any EA game that tried to polish some crap).

But the Devil stays the same. I’ve only played the first and the third game and, except for the graphics and some new gameplay features, everything in the same. Take, for example, the main character – you don’t play with Dante anymore, but some new funky kid name Nero – that’s about the only difference there is between the two. Nero has the same mucho-cocky attitude, wears the same clothes, even goes to the same barber. And guess what weapons he has – a sword and a gun – totally different person. (Of course, I only played a few levels and maybe later I’ll find out that they really are the same person)

Don’t get me wrong – the fact that the game is the same is not a bad thing, as it delivers exactly what I was expecting from it – hardcore demon slaying action. On plus of that you get, as a bonus, some sort of story, and so far it has been pretty engaging for this sort of game. Playing it, it reminds me of God of War, and it’s clear Kratos borrowed some of the design of the initial DMC. Nero’s new ability is the newest shit in 3rd person action/arcade/adventure games, something we’ll just call “the grappling hook”. You know how the Dark Price had chains in The Two Thrones and he used them in jumping puzzles? Or Kratos’ chain blades in the second coming of God of War? Well, Nero has a demon hand, and it extends and catches fuckers. And he can also use it in jumping puzzles… and other stuff.

Think I’ve said enough for now… maybe one more thing – haven’t tried it personally but I heard, and expect it to be so from previous adventures, that the controls from the keyboard are on the sucky part. Lucky for me I just bought a XBOX gamepad and it runs on the uber smooth side.

-MasterX
Who’s your daddy?

Penny Arcade Adventures

It’s hard to comment on this without repeating what every other game review site has said: if you like the Penny Arcade comics you’ll definitely like the game. Since I like their shit – I also enjoyed the game.

That’s not to say it’s a great game – it’s a good game, but doesn’t do anything spectacular for the industry, except to let you live the comic. And that’s why the way it’s impacts you is strongly based on how you feel about the comic.

The greatest parts about it are its visuals (it has great cartoons shaders, bring comic books to life), its story telling, with great lines that you would expect from Tycho and Gabriel (like “What.The.Fuck.) and attention to detail. You get to customize you character, although there aren’t that many choices. Then you enter a steampunk world with shit happening in it. The story is told through static comics – the bad part is that there’s no voice for the dialogs; the great part is that your customized character appears in the frames, which means they did drawing for every combination possible.

The game is an adventure/quest/RPG, with combat somewhere in the way of old Final Fantasy games – you have some skills that load in time, and when a character has a certain skill ready you can use it, restarting the process, or you can wait for something more powerful to load. The combat is more fun than it sound, especially after you gain a few levels and don’t feel like some fights are two though.

Since the game is designed to be episodic, it’s kind of short (I finished it in about 6 hours, without doing all the quests and getting every achievement) – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it end about the time it start being not so interesting.

For the twenty bucks I spent on it, I can say the game is worth it. The guys at PA said they make some changes in the future episodes, based on what people liked and didn’t like. If you're not sure if you should get it or not, you could check the demo.

Too bad that Looking For Group comic doesn’t do their own game (although they said something about a Flash game, but I’m not too thrilled about that).

-MasterX
sharp - I'm not not paying to just drink and go to the seaside. Get your ass to writing something

One more Diablo 3 post

Since the internet is enjoying its “Diablo 3” is coming fever, I just couldn’t pass on doing another post about this. Things have pretty much settled, so I don’t think you’ll have to read any more on this.

On a certain forum I usually read, people are throwing their two cents on this. I already talked about what I think of Diablo’s storyline (unbelievably enough, it seems there are people that think that Diablo had a story) – I’m just going to say this to the people saying “How can they make Diablo 3? What about the storyline? I’ve already killed all the three Prime Evils?” – Evil never dies, fuckers! Maybe this time you could take on EA Games or Bush. So shut up and wait.

Passing on – it seems, from the 10-20 minutes of gameplay showed, that the new game is not gothic/Diablo/whatever enough, that is had to bright graphics, it’s too much WoW, the skills are kind of lame, there no mana bar, and so on.

About the graphics part – let’s get one thing straight – Blizzard never had extraordinary programmers. In fact, Blizzard just exists to make a point: you don’t need great graphics, you don’t have to make your buyers get thousand dollars computers to play your game, you don’t have to have a great story. You just need some incredible game designers to get the whole world hooked on your shit. And Blizzard only shits gold; if, by any chance, they feel their shit is just regular old shit, they don’t go to the bathroom.

What’s great about Blizzard it’s that they don’t have to make games to live – WoW has covered them with money, so they could just keep milking that cow and not have to do anything else. But their, like Santa Clause and what to put a smile to our face – so they though “Hey, let’s make these fuckers happy – throw some Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 and them”

There’s more to be said about this, but I think we had enough Diablo for now. Let’s just hope Blizzard doesn’t stay on forums as much as I do and they don’t wake up one morning saying “You don’t like the pretty colors? Screw you, we’re not releasing Diablo anymore!”

-MasterX
Shut the fuck up Diablo, you’re dead!

NubiSoft (to be read, noob i soft)

As I`ve said on Saturday a friend of mine (Phazzy) camed by to kick off some lan games on our brand new aquisitions, Settlers 6 and Settlers 2 (10th aniversay), both games made by BlueByte and distributed by UbiSoft.

It seems that UbiSoft tried their best to crush my second toughts regarding OLD/NEW games theory :)

Here it goes:

1) I installed the game on my pc.
2) I tried to execute the game but it started downloading an update which I let to complete.
3) I installed the update.
4) I tried to run the game.
5) Error! Please insert original DVD! (here I went: ?!?!?! WTF !?!?!?)

You can imagine the level of frustation you`re getting when you have just purchased an original game and the anti-piracy check detects that in fact your ORIGINAL DVD is a fake! :) jessus!

Aaaanyway, here`s the funny part: I ejected the dvd, tried to start the game and it worked! :) Well, not quite, it said that it didn`t detected any dvd in drive and asked me to register the game online... so I entered the serial and then it worked (without any DVD from here on).

Well, I guess that everything is alright when it ends well, so we installed the game on the other pc also, BUT (yeah, there`s a but part), when we tried to create a LAN game it failed lamentably (I won`t spend time on describing the behaviour but you`re really getting the impresion of a lame cracked game).

We ended by dropping SETTLERS 6 from our schedule and we installed SETTLERS 2 (which worked like a charm) ... QED! (old games rule!).

Now, I promised I`ll let ya know on the choppers thingy ... well, the lasers are kinnda shitty and the choppers are kinnda challenging to control but I like it. After a while you get the hang of it and you can have lots of fun by trying to land them on different objects/surfaces :)

Until next time, game on!

OMG!!! Diablo 3

Okay, so I got pwned by the internet geeks… What can I say, life sucks.

Blizzard has announced Diablo 3. Not much to say – the internet has exploded, every forum topic about Diablo 3 gets 5 post per minute etc etc. So I guess I have nothing to do than just join the drooling party and wait patiently for the game. It’ going to be release “when it’s ready” – speculations say this might be December 2009, but we’ll just have to wait and find out.

What’s really great about this news is that I really wanted to play some Diablo clone – we’ll, there nothing better than Diablo as a Diablo clone. I think Blizzard is just going to go, grab a microphone and say “Yo! Fuckers! This is how it should be done…” And, from the gameplay video, I’m really enjoying the new physics.

What’s really not some great – the douches saying “Can’t wait for it! Hope it would have the same great story as the first two!” WTF??? Have we been playing the same game? I mean, imagine being a writer for Diablo – it take 5 minutes max to come up with the story “Diablo has risen. Go kill him. And he has some minions and brothers and shit. Killed them too” What can I say… Nobel prize material.
Anyways, I owe you an article on Diablo…

-MasterX
They say that when you play a Windows CD backwards it plays satanic music. That’s nothing – when you play it forward it installs Windows.

Paintball, but with lasers and helicopters

Howdy folks!

I`ve just been summoned to a birthday party for tonight and as any birthday party, you`re stuck when it comes down to gifts... (OK, so what has all this have to do with games?!).
Well, since most of my friends are programmers / web designers / gamers (or even hardcore gamers) and this guys is no exception, the first idea is to get him a game :) (of course, an old game, to be sure he likes it :P (see my previous post about NEW games -- no game, just pain)).

But since old games (GOOD games) can also be found on most of the torrents nowadays (at no cost at all) we decided to use the money for a better cause, a remote controlled helicopter (yeah, it flies).
While I decided on the model to buy as present I also noticed something very interesting, a product which included two choppers equipped with rocket sky technology, two lasers :) and painted in different colors (one red and one blue). Here`s an image our paparazzi managed to take of these latest hawks of the skies.
Ok, not so fancy you say ... so, you`ve got two choppers, one red and one blue, equipped with some cheap lasers ... why did I lost my time reading all this? Well, from what I`m about to show you next it does look like a LOT OF FUN :)p

I already ordered this product and can hardly wait to test them out with my brother Jesse. I`ll let you know if they rocked my world or not.

Gaming isn`t all related to computers you know ... Oh, and tomorrow a friend of mine (Phazzy) comes by and we`re celebrating GAMING DAY. Mostly two guys, two computers, one network cable, some beers, some food and alot of FUN when we test out the new (OLD) SETTLERS 6 that we just ordered.

Until next time, game on!

Diablo 3 Madness

The guys over at Blizzard must be laughing their asses of. And if they’re not, they are not the geniuses everybody thinks they are. Allow me to explain…

Two days ago the splash on the Blizzard site featured a splash that had a strange image on it. The internet freaks immediately caught fire and start making up shit. Before we get to that shit, you must also note that somewhere on the Blizzard site appeared a picture that had a number for a name (04.jpg I think). Now, let the Conspiracy Theory begin – the strange image must be a rune from Diablo 2. And 04 might stand for the 4th letter in the alphabet – there you have it, clear indications to Diablo 3.

Some sane people said that the rune might just be from Frostmourne and this is just some cool way to announce The Wrath of the Lich King. But, I guess Blizz guys caught up to the fact that they can fuck with people’s minds, and the second day posted another rune, this time one that isn’t on Frostmourne, and just in Diablo 2.

You wouldn’t believe the shit people come up with – the best one was “Well, they released a patch for Broodwar just before they announced Starcraft 2. And, guess what, they just released a patch for Diablo 2” Yeap, I guess it’s clear we should be expecting Diablo 3.
Today, Blizz threw another rune, and to me it was a clear indication they are just making shit up – the third rune seems to represent Protoss from Starcraft 2. And the ice on the splash seems to be melting… uuuuuu…

Anyway, tomorrow another hint should show it’s face. And a new piece of the puzzle. I clearly can’t stand the suspense. And, if the crazy internet people are right, I’ll dedicate a post to Diablo and what it meant to the industry.

-MasterX
Why do weapons from the future overheat after 4-5 shots?

No game, just pain

Is it just me or they simply don`t make games like they used to? Is hard to find a good game to play nowadays... and when you do find it, you realize that in fact it is an old piece of software ;) .

Just a few weeks ago I was looking for a game to play (after being cold with girls => or the other way around :P <= for a while, the gaming instinct tends to grow on me) and most of the games out there are either way too evolved for my pc (a mere AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ with a Geforce 7600 GT and 1Gb of RAM --> which is not so bad) or way too stupid/boring to waste gaming time on them (you know that feeling when you finish a mision and you feel sort of stupid because you`ve used brute force to beat the crap of the other guy (or AI) ... you`ve sent all your troops charging and you simply outnumbered him :) ... yeah, of course you do).

Why are they spending more and even more time,money and skill on making better textures and audio when the story of the game stinks?! Have we transformed in monkeys that are only impressed by colors and sounds? NO! OF COURSE WE DIDN`T! We demand games with GOOD stories and GOOD gameplay, games which can keep you awake deep into the night (cause you didn`t reached a savepoint :D most likely) and games where you don`t drool on the keyboard due to brain idle.

I remember playing LOTUS on HC 90 . For me those graphics and sounds were good enough... and what fun I had with that game. Noooo, today you have all sorts of cool graphical effects (smoke, shadows, feedback) and they try to reproduce reality as much as possible ... Why would I want a realistic GAME?! I want a game where I can escape from reality, where you look at the clock and notice that only one hour had passed but didn`t noticed the sun going down and come back up again.

I swear, if they continue this way I`ll really have to look for a girlfriend...

Why am I writing all this? Dunno exactly, mostly because MasterX asked me to... he said it would be a gaming blog read by no-one ... so for all the hot blondes out there, my phone number is 0749-XXX-XXX.

Btw, I`m going to Armin Van Buuren ... this saturday at "Arenele Romane" (Bucharest). Hope to see ya there ;)

Until next time, game on!

The Witcher Adventure Contest

Some time ago, the guys from CD Project Red started a design contest. Since I've been dreaming for some time to be a game designer (but, due to lack of experience my CV had been turned down and I had to settle for programmer), I thought I might just give it a try. Being a lazy mofo, I almost missed submission. But hey, not sleeping a few nights hasn't killed that many people, and I'm fucking up pointers pretty bad when I'm awake, so maybe if I was sleeping while I'm programming might make our soft work - well, I pushed myself a bit and enter my fantasy work, hoping I'll get those glamorous wicther prizes.

Well, when I say "hoping" I'm being extremely positive - the second I sent the mail I started crying like a little girl, complaining to myself that the shit was not good enough, that I can do better, bla bla bla - you know, little bitch menstruating and stuff.

Well, to make a short story shorter, I didn't win. But I got runner up, which is pretty sweet to me (mine is Master Samurai X, a mixture with the mails and me forgetting to sign my work).

There are some more stages, but they require some work with the Djini editor, so I'm not so sure if I'm going to continue. And, between us, I think the fuckers that won first prize cheated - but hey, that's life.

-MasterX
a mixture of alcohol, smoke and pirated games